Asylum and Migration statistics
Introduction
Migration has become one of the defining issues of our time, as rich countries including the UK have developed and refined racialised and class-based policies to protect their borders against those seeking safety and security, while wooing the wealthy and enabling the exploitation of a migrant worker underclass in sectors such as agriculture, care and domestic work. In the process, migrants and refugees from the poor world have been stigmatised, scapegoated and blamed for austerity policies. This is all a far cry from 1948 and 1951, when, after the second world war, lawyers and politicians worked together to create the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. In truth international circumstances have also changed, as man-made global heating, destruction of environments and livelihoods, burgeoning arms sales fuelling political, ethnic and religious conflict add to the reasons people have to move and seek shelter and protection.
In the rich world, the politics of asylum have moved from a humanitarian framework, centred on the needs of the displaced, to a nationalist one which sees the protection of ‘our people’, borders and national sovereignty as paramount, and poor migrants and asylum seekers as threats deserving to be repelled and punished.
Structural racism runs through asylum procedures, from the militarisation of borders making journeys ever more dangerous, to the grim reception conditions or the brutality of detention, the bureaucratic obstacles of asylum claims and the endless waiting in a penurious limbo of forced dependence, unable to work or move from assigned accommodation. Politicians’ rhetoric, amplified by media headlines, seeks to justify the cruel policies towards the unwanted while vaunting Britain’s ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘generosity’ towards favoured groups (currently from Ukraine and Hong Kong).
Structural racism is seen too in the system of visas for work, facilitating the rank exploitation of migrant workers from the poor world, including nurses, carers and domestic workers, and seasonal agricultural workers, while squeezing them for ever-more unaffordable visas and denying them recourse to public funds.
Note on statistics
Statistics from different sources (UNHCR, Eurostat, Home Office, ONS) are often slightly different, using different methods of measurement, so can only be an approximation, albeit a fairly accurate one.
Net migration: figures
The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) provisional net migration figure (total inward migration less emigration) for 2023 is 685,000 – lower than that for 2022, when net migration was 764,000. In the year to June 2024, around 1.28 million visas were issued[1] – 1.16 million for work, study and family migration, around 75,000 humanitarian visas, 46,000 temporary, EU settlement or other visas, while 38,784 ‘irregular’ arrivals were detected.
Asylum – numbers (UK in the world)
From the way asylum is debated in the UK, you would think a huge proportion of the population were asylum seekers. But nothing could be further from the truth: the Migration Observatory’s analysis of the UK annual population survey shows that in 2022 roughly 387,000 of the 10 million UK residents born abroad arrived seeking asylum, equating to an estimated 0.6% of the UK population (6 in 1,000). Most have lived in the UK for over a decade.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the end of 2023 50 million of the estimated 117,300,000 people forcibly displaced through persecution, human rights violations, conflict, violence or events seriously disturbing public order, were refugees, people seeking asylum and others needing international protection (the remaining 67.3 million were internally displaced, to another part of their own country). In 2023, Iran was home to over 3.7 million refugees; Turkey to 3.5 million refugees and people seeking asylum; and Germany hosted over 2.5 million refugees and 361,000 people seeking asylum. The UK was home to a total of 448,620 refugees and 138,156 people seeking asylum.
In 2023, the UK received the fifth largest number of people seeking asylum in Europe (84,425), equating to 7% of the total asylum applicants across the EU+ and UK combined over that period, but the 20th largest intake when measured ‘per head of population’. Official statistics show that the UK received 75,658 applications for asylum, relating to 97,107 people in the year to June 2024 (a third of which came from people arriving on small boats), down from 81,875, relating to 102,371 people, in y/e June 2023. Six to 7% of claims were from unaccompanied children.
Age disputes
Children under 18 claiming asylum may not be detained, should be looked after by local authorities and should have their claims dealt with quickly. For at least two decades, officials have performed age assessments on those whose claim to be children is disbelieved. In January 2022, then home secretary Priti Patel introduced legislation requiring young ‘age-disputed’ asylum seekers to undergo ‘scientific’ tests, claiming that two-thirds of age-disputed young people were adults ‘posing as children’. In fact, as Home Office statistics show, over half of age disputes are resolved in favour of age-disputed children. In the year to June 2024, of the 4,727 people who claimed asylum as children and whose age dispute was resolved, 60% (2,854) were confirmed to be children, and 40% (1,873) adults.
Between January 2022 and June 2023, nearly 500 children wrongly identified as adults were placed in adult detention or unsupervised accommodation, many sharing rooms with unrelated adults with no safeguarding in place, and 14 children were charged with immigration offences under NABA and spent time in adult prisons.
Asylum backlog
Once an asylum claim is made, the claimant waits for an initial decision by the Home Office. The waiting time for a decision increased as a six-month target was abandoned and officials’ productivity declined. Legislation in 2022 and 2023 made the decision process more complicated and the backlog of undecided claims grew. In October 2024, according to the Times (£), the total backlog amounted to nearly 225,000, including 137,525 people waiting for an appeal or review of a refusal decision; one man had waited nearly 17 years, and 19 had waited between ten and 16 years, for their cases to be resolved.
It was reported in November 2023 that since 2021, over 7,500 unaccompanied children had been waiting for over a year to have their asylum claims decided, and 57 had waited for over five years. Research by Liverpool University confirmed the disastrous impact such delays have on children’s wellbeing and development.
Grant or refusal of asylum
In the year to June 2024, 91,885 asylum decisions were made (compared with 24,336 in the previous year, an increase attributed to more staff and higher productivity through changes in the process). There were 52,891 grants of refugee status or some other form of humanitarian leave in the UK on initial decision, covering nearly 68,000 people (excluding those in resettlement schemes, see below). Overall, 58% of those seeking asylum were granted it, compared with 71% in the previous year. Around 18,000 people had their claims ‘withdrawn’ for missing an interview or not responding to a letter.
Appeals
In the year to March 2024 there were 29,172 asylum appeals lodged, compared with 8,019 appeals lodged the previous year – a 264% increase, driven by the Home Office speeding up decisions to tackle the massive backlog. The waiting time for an asylum appeal was around 39 weeks. In the first quarter of 2024, just under half (49%) of asylum appeals heard were successful.
Small boat arrivals
There are no safe routes for most of those seeking asylum in the UK (see below). Desperate people everywhere take desperate measures, and crossing the Channel in small unseaworthy dinghies is one such. While the twin issues of migration and asylum continue to dominate the media and political agenda, disproportionate focus, time and money is spent on preventing spontaneous arrivals on small boats, which at 31,493 for the year ending June 2024 (down from 44,460 for the year to June 2023), is a very small number compared with the roughly 3.4 million visas granted in that year (or 1.23 million excluding visitor and transit visas). The top country of origin of those arriving on small boats remains Afghanistan (18%). Other significant nationalities in 2023-24 were Iran (13%), Turkey (10%), Syria (9%), and in the first half of 2024, Vietnam (10%).
Of those arriving in small boats from 2018 to June 2024, 99% claimed asylum, and of those who had received an initial decision, 71% were successful.
Following the failure of Conservative efforts to stop small boat crossings, in August 2024 the Labour government announced plans to recruit 100 specialist investigators and officials to ‘smash the gangs’ bringing people seeking asylum across the Channel, plans costed at £75 million, on top of payments to France in the past decade of over £319 million to stop the boats, contracts of over £1 billion for Channel surveillance, and a further £476 million pledged to France between 2023-26.
Deaths in the Channel
The ‘war on the small boats’ leads to increased risk of death for the people attempting the crossing, as boats become more overcrowded and routes more dangerous. Data gathered by the French organisation GISTI reveals over 358 deaths in the Channel since 1999. In 2023, 38 people are known to have died trying to cross the Channel, and in the first nine months of 2024, 37 people died, including infants.
The Rwanda scheme
The scheme to send people seeking asylum who arrived by small boat to Rwanda for their claims to be processed and for settlement there if successful, was agreed in April 2022 with the Rwanda government, which said it could initially accommodate 200 people and could increase capacity once the flights began. The Supreme Court ruled the scheme unlawful in November 2023 on the basis that Rwanda was not a safe country for people seeking asylum, and in response the Safety of Rwanda Act was passed, coming into force in April 2024. The scheme was cancelled by the incoming government in July 2024, and no one was sent to Rwanda under the scheme. The Migration Observatory estimates that at least £318 million was spent on the aborted scheme to July 2024.
Removal of people refused asylum
In the year to June 2024, 2,418 people refused asylum were forcibly returned to their home country; 5,100 agreed to ‘voluntary’ return, and 180 left the country after being refused entry at the port. In August 2024 the new government announced that it would redeploy 300 staff to increase enforced and voluntary returns of people refused asylum, which it said had decreased by 40% since 2010, adding that it had carried out nine deportation flights in the six weeks it had been in government.
UK ‘safe and legal’ routes
The UK has given a route to safety to specific groups – Ukrainians and people from Hong Kong; a small number of people from Syria and Afghanistan, and a minuscule number of people from the rest of the world (just 487 in the past year). In the year to June 2024:
- 28,419 new visas were granted under the Ukraine schemes, with a total of 261,184 granted from the schemes’ introduction in March 2022 to June 2024;
- 22,306 BN(O) visas were granted to Hong Kongers, with a total of 169,892 granted from March 2021 to June 2024;
- 8,198 visas were granted under UK resettlement schemes covering the rest of the world, of which 7,711 went to Afghan nationals, and 487 to those from other countries. The Afghan schemes have resettled a total of 28,985 people since 2021 (over half of the total were people evacuated in July and August 2021), and a total of 3,600 people from other countries were resettled in the UK from 2021 to June 2024;
- 16,244 people were granted family reunion visas to join refugees or those with humanitarian leave in the UK.
Reception and detention
People arriving in the UK without a visa are housed in reception or detention centres while a decision about their future is made and/or before they are removed. Both are forms of confinement, with no-choice asylum accommodation – particularly hostels, barracks and barges – experienced as semi-detention.
Reception centres house people seeking asylum who are not immediately detained and do not have the means support themselves. At the end of 2023 35,497 applications[i] for accommodation support were made, an increase of 4% from the previous year. People are sent to one of 8 Initial Accommodation (IA) centres across the country, usually hostel-style environments in shared houses/ flats, with a capacity of around 200 each, and designed to be temporary, for a maximum stay of 3-4 weeks, although stays of several months are common according to 2024 data from the European Council of Refugees and Exiles. The numbers housed in IA hostels range from 80 in Belfast to 3,369 in London. 1,880 people were housed in IA on 30 June 2024[ii]. They are then sent to long-term Dispersal Accommodation (DA) – HMOs, flats and houses – until the final determination of their asylum claim, which is often years. In the year to June 2024, 296,577 people were housed in DA, 29% more than the previous year.
Over the past few years the Home Office has increased its use of Contingency Accommodation (CA) – of which hotels, barracks and barges are the most high-profile, despite hosting only 42% of claimants y/e June 2024 – as space in ‘mainstream’ asylum accommodation has run out. The numbers hosted across all CA increased by 15% in 2024 from the 9 months to June 2023. While most (94%) remain in hotels, 3,211 people stayed in large-scale accommodation (barracks and barges) in 2024.
The use of barracks and barges was presented as being ‘cheaper and more orderly’ than hotels, which were reported to cost the UK £8 million a day (for 395 accommodation hotels) in 2023. This figure has been hard to corroborate, and the National Audit Office put hotel spend at £274 million in 2023 (£750,685 daily). However, the move to barracks and barges has not proved cost-effective: the NAO reports that they will cost £46 million more than hotels.
Most asylum accommodation is run for profit by private companies, and despite frequent severe criticisms and reports of squalid conditions, mould and infestations, the Home Office awarded new 10-year contracts worth £4 billion in 2019 to Serco, Mears and Clearsprings Ready Homes (the latter, whose sole business is asylum accommodation, doubled its profits to £62.5 million in 2023).
Asylum support
Each adult in self-catered accommodation receives £49.18 a week for food, clothing and shoes, hygiene and toiletries, travel and everything else. Those in hotels receive £8.86 a week. Families receive an additional £9.50 for children under one and £5.25 for those aged 1-3; children between 4 and 18 receive the same flat rate as single adults. For decades charities and campaigners have argued that the payments are not adequate to meet essential needs, particularly as those seeking asylum are prohibited from working. Asylum support is currently just 67% of universal credit (£311.68 a month) and since 2011 has not kept pace with inflation. The weekly figure for people in full board accommodation has only increased by 86p in the last 4 years.
Detention
New arrivals awaiting a decision on permission to enter, those arriving undocumented or who have overstayed their visas, those awaiting removal or appealing against deportation may be held in detention, in specific centres often near ports or airports or in remote areas. In total, 18,918 adults entered detention in y/e June 2024, 12% fewer than 2023, and almost 40% (7,275) were claiming asylum. Over half (52%) of those released from detention in 2024 were granted bail either by the Home Office or an immigration judge,[iii] while 42% were removed from the UK.
Most detention facilities are run for profit by private contractors. Conditions and detainees’ treatment are regularly criticised by parliamentary committees and courts: an exposé into the treatment of people in Brook House IRC at Gatwick found a ‘culture of violence’ that led to a public Inquiry published in 2023. Short-Term Holding Facilities (STHFs) held 18% (3,397) of detained people in y/e June 2024, all new arrivals, for up to seven days while a decision was made whether to admit them. Seven Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) are currently in use and held 12,421 people in the year ending June 2024. Purpose-built IRCs (as opposed to conversions) used high security prison designs in their creation. In August 2024 the new Labour government announced plans to re-open two IRCs and convert a third from a women’s to a men’s facility, increasing the detention estate by 15.5%. Immigration detention is indefinite (there is no time limit); while the majority (61%) of people leaving detention in 2023 were held for less than 29 days, 39 were held for over 2 years, more than double the number from 2022, and the longest serving detainee was held for 1,574 days (4 years and almost 4 months).
For details of health care in detention and reception see the Health Statistics pages, published in June 2024.
Self-Harm
People in danger of being returned to what they have fled from, waiting with no date for a decision in basic and harsh conditions which separate them from the outside world, are necessarily anxious, depressed and can have physical complaints left unattended. Charities and advocacy organisations are very concerned at the ‘alarmingly high’ rates of self-harm in immigration detention. FOI requests by Byline Times reveal 513 incidents of self-harm in immigration detention in y/e June 2024, an increase of 67% on the previous year. Self-harm is increasing in asylum accommodation too: the NAO references 283 incidents of self-harm or suicide in accommodation in the 6 months to January 2024. The increase is particularly high in large-scale sites such as Wethersfield airfield, where FOIs reveal 30 recorded instances of men self-harming or attempting suicide (or at serious risk of doing so) in the first three months of 2024, and safeguarding referrals jumped in the same period to over 160, from 43 in the second half of 2023.
Deaths in detention or Home Office accommodation
Government statistics are not comprehensive, they only cover deaths while detained or under escort, not deaths in reception facilities or while someone is detained in prison under immigration powers. The main cause of death in detention is suicide. Data from Inquest shows 21 deaths of immigration detainees over the last decade – 10 self-inflicted, 9 non-self-inflicted and 2 awaiting classification.
An investigation by The Civil Fleet through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests show that at least 40 people died while housed in Home Office accommodation in 2023, an average of 3.3 deaths a month. Most (31) were men, with 8 women and one unknown. The average age at death was just under 37, less than half the UK national average of 78.6 for males and 82.6 for females born in the country. Four deaths were confirmed as suicide and four suspected: a dramatic increase from 3 suicides in 2022 and just 2 in 2021. Almost half (45%) of cases did not have a determined cause of death but were merely noted as ‘found dead’ or ‘passed away’. Eight people died from medical conditions, though it is not clear whether medical neglect was a factor.
Migration for work, study and family reunion
A migrant is anyone travelling for more than a temporary purpose. The UK includes students in the migration statistics, as well as those coming to the country for work. The British economy depends on migrant labour, and since the end of free movement for EU nationals with Brexit, non-EU migration for work, particularly in nursing, social care, catering, agriculture and construction, has risen dramatically. There were 286,382 work visas issued in the year to June 2024 (and 260,392 for their dependants), down by 11% from the previous year but double the number in 2019. Almost half of those coming for work were from India or Nigeria, most commonly in the health and social care sector. A record 106,000 visas went to care workers (excluding dependants) in 2023, up from 22,000 in 2022, as a result of adding care workers to the ‘shortage occupation’ list, to fill shortages caused by historically low wages, exacerbated by Brexit and the pandemic. With 350,000 visas granted (including to dependants), compared with 118,000 in total for all other skilled work, the health and social care sector accounted for 75% of skilled worker visas in 2023, although the low pay and unsocial hours meant that in December 2023 there were still 152,000 vacancies in this sector.
In December 2023 the Sunak government announced plans to cut net migration by 300,000. The plans included increasing the income threshold for skilled worker visas (excluding health and care workers) and restricting the rights of students and care workers to bring family members with them. Since March 2024 newly arrived care workers may not bring family members to join them, a change which led to an immediate drop of 80% in visa applications in the health and social care sector.
The incoming Labour government has said it will retain the minimum income threshold (MIR) for skilled workers, which rose by 48% to £38,700 in April 2024 (although the MIR does not apply to workers in the health and social care sector, who can be admitted on earnings as low as £23,200).
Work visas and exploitation: health and social care
A chronic labour shortage in the care sector, caused by low pay and status and exacerbated by Brexit, led to the government relaxing the rules for entry of workers in the sector. Until December 2023 there was no requirement for employers in the sector to be registered with the Care Quality Commission, and regulation of the domiciliary care sector is virtually non-existent. Only 1.5% of the 11,600 applications for new sponsor licences in the sector received in the 18 months from February 2022 were refused. The sharp increase in migrant care workers led to a rise in illegal recruitment fees, debt bondage, wage underpayment, and other forms of labour exploitation.
A report by the Independent Inspector of Borders and Immigration published in March 2024 found abuses including the issue of 275 certificates of sponsorship for a care home which had no knowledge of the application, and 1,234 certificates to a company stating it had four employees when granted a licence – leading to workers who had incurred huge debts for recruitment finding no work for them on arrival.
In July 2023 the chair of the government’s Migration Advisory Committee referred to the ‘appalling’ tacit acceptance of exploitation of low-paid foreign workers in the sector. The charity Unseen, which runs a government-funded helpline for victims of trafficking and modern slavery, published figures showing that while in 2021, calls to its helpline revealed 63 potential victims of modern slavery in the care sector, in 2022 this had risen to 708 potential victims, and in 2023 the charity registered 918 potential victims in the care sector.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA)’s quarterly intelligence on forced labour reports or referrals reveals the highest level of modern slavery and human trafficking in the care sector, caused by two factors: the tying of workers to a certificate of sponsorship or visa, leading employees to work in unacceptable conditions under threat of cancelling the sponsorship; and irregular work under threat of being reported to the authorities. The most common type of exploitation in the sector was inflated work-finding fees. Indian nationals were the most common reported victims in the year to March 2024, followed by Nigerian nationals. Other sectors where exploitation is common are car wash, agriculture, construction and food processing.
Work visas and exploitation: domestic workers
Around 20,000 Overseas Domestic Worker (ODW) visas are issued annually for live-in workers in private households. The terms of the domestic workers’ visa (since 2012, 6 months maximum, with no route to settlement) create the conditions for super-exploitation. A February 2024 survey of 200 migrant domestic workers, most from the Philippines, India and Indonesia, found that nearly all worked round the clock, earning 52 pence per day. More than 80% reported being denied regular meals; over half reported physical abuse and 30% sexual abuse. 80% of employers lived in London’s most affluent areas: Kensington, Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Mayfair. In May 2023 the Employment Appeal Tribunal ruled unlawful the exemption from the national minimum wage for live-in workers ‘treated as a member of the family’, and in April 2024 regulations removing the exemption came into force.
Work visas and exploitation: seasonal agricultural workers scheme (SAWS)
The scheme provides agricultural and poultry workers to farmers through allocating visas to a small number of operators (currently seven) who farm out the workers among farmers needing labour. Agricultural visas are for 6 months in any 12-month period, and poultry production visas for around 3 months to 31 December. In 2019 (when the scheme was reintroduced to deal with labour shortages post-Brexit), 2,500 visas were issued; in 2024, 47,000 were available (including 2,000 for poultry workers), plus another 10,000 if needed. Workers pay their own visa and travel costs, often on top of illegal recruitment fees. They must be paid the national living wage, for a guaranteed minimum 32 hours per week since April 2023, but employers frequently deduct extortionate accommodation costs. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found in 2023 that in official inspections by the GLAA, nearly half of the 845 workers interviewed raised abuses by employers including racism, threats and wage theft, and on three of the farms, 80% of workers raised abuses. In March 2024, four UN Special Rapporteurs wrote to foreign secretary David Cameron saying some migrant agricultural workers were believed to be victims of modern slavery; two months later the scheme was extended for a further five years. A review by the government’s Migration Advisory Committee in July 2024 recommended fairer work and pay, better enforcement of workers’ rights, and transferring the costs of visas and travel to employers to reduce risks of debt bondage and exploitation.
Modern slavery/ trafficking
Modern slavery includes any form of human trafficking, slavery or forced labour. Human trafficking is the use of force, threats, coercion or deception to transport, recruit or harbour people in order to exploit them (through labour, organ removal, crime, sex or marriage). Statistics from the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) on referrals of potential victims of modern slavery or trafficking reveal that in the first half of 2024, 8,837 people were referred, mostly adult Albanians and Vietnamese, with labour exploitation being the most common reason. (A quarter of referrals were of British nationals, mostly children.) Between March 2023 and June 2024, the Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice received 268 warnings from prison staff that an inmate was a potential victim of modern slavery and trafficking.
Students
Students and their family members received 656,589 visas in the year to June 2023. From January 2024, international students’ ability to have family members join them has been severely restricted, and as a result, from January to July 2024 applications for study were down 16% on the same period in 2023, and in the year to June 2024, visas for students and family members dropped to 530,496.
Family migration
As part of the Conservative government’s plan to reduce migration by 300,000, it raised the minimum income required for British citizens or those with settled status to bring in a spouse or partner from £18,600 to £38,700. Initially this was scheduled for spring 2024, but following an outcry including a 75,000-signature petition, it was decided to phase it in, with an increase to £29,000 in force on 11 April 2024, to £34,500 in late 2024 and to £38,700 in ‘early 2025’. The incoming Labour government has said it will commission a review of the income requirements for family migration and will not implement the 2nd and 3rd phase rises until the review is complete.
Analysis by the Migration Observatory (MO) demonstrates that, with median employees’ salaries at £29,700, around 50% of all employees do not meet the current income threshold to bring in a spouse or partner. The House of Commons Library could find no other country which set such a high income threshold for family reunion. The UK’s family reunion policies were rated 55th out of 56 countries (lower than Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, with only Denmark more restrictive) in the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX).
The incoming Labour government has said it will retain the restrictions on family unity rights of students and care workers.
Visa fees
Immigration and nationality fees in the UK are charged on a commercial basis to ‘reflect the value of the product’. Since October 2023, a single visit visa has cost £115, and a student visa £490. A three-year work visa costs £719, and a settlement visa costs £2,885. An application relying on the right to respect for family and private life costs £1,258 (from July 2024). These charges are for each person, including children entering as dependants of the main applicant. A skilled worker coming in with a partner and two children has to find £2,876 for a three-year visa. Additionally, those coming for work, study or for family unity must pay a health surcharge to cover costs of NHS care. The skilled worker’s family would have to find £1,035 health surcharge per person per year for the adults and £776 for children, all payable in advance at the time of application for the visa. Government income from immigration and nationality fees rose from £184 million in 2003 to £2,200 million in 2022, not including another £1,700 million in health surcharge and £600 million in employer levies.
‘No recourse to public funds’ (NRPF)
It is not often realised by those critical of migrant workers that almost no one on a visa (work, study or family life) can access welfare benefits or social housing. The NRPF condition is applied to migrants with limited leave, including visitors, students and workers, and disentitles them from accessing Universal Credit, Child Benefit, housing and other benefits, even if they are working and paying tax and national insurance. A report by the Migration Observatory found that at the end of 2022, about 2.6 million lawful UK residents had a visa which typically has an NRPF condition, three-quarters of them students and workers (just under a million each) – over a million more than at the end of 2020. In May 2023 Praxis reported that two-thirds of people with NRPF they surveyed were struggling to feed their children, and 59% had been forced into debt to afford the cost of basic essentials – almost three times as many as in the UK population as a whole. An October 2023 report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found that among migrants, destitution is 35% above the national rate.
The hostile environment
Those who cannot prove their right to live in the UK, including those born in the UK, are liable to arrest, detention and removal. Under ‘hostile environment’ measures, mostly brought in in 2014, they may not work, rent property, drive, bank, marry or access hospital treatment. The racialised nature of these measures was seen in the Windrush scandal, which broke in 2018, revealing that thousands of pensioners, mainly from the Caribbean but also from south Asia, who had lived legally in the UK for fifty years, had been treated as illegally in the UK, losing jobs and homes, some detained, some deported or denied entry on return from holidays. But the measures have also affected many others who have fallen into undocumented status through restrictive rules, the high costs of visas and health surcharges and the cost of living; in 2017 (the latest year for which figures are available), it was estimated that between 800,000 and 1.2 million people without papers lived in the UK – more than elsewhere in Europe because of the lack of routes to regularisation. More than half were from Asia.
The Migrants’ Rights Network revealed in August 2024 that 19,895 immigration raids were conducted between January 2022 and September 2023 – they increased by 68% in the year to September 2023, 29% of them targeting South Asians. British nationals were the second-highest nationality targeted, after Indians, suggesting that racial profiling rather than intelligence on illegal working was behind many raids. In London and Birmingham, raids tended to take place in areas with racialised populations: Harlesden, north Kensington, Croydon, Smethwick – but raids decreased in Glasgow and east London, where activist networks conducted anti-raids mobilisations. Elsewhere, dock and port areas of Belfast, Stranraer and Birkenhead saw the most raids. Fines to the value of £28.4 million were issued to employers of unauthorised workers in 2023, and reached over £8 million in the first quarter of 2024. In February 2024, the penalty rose from £15,000 to £45,000 per worker, and up to £60,000 per worker for repeated breaches.
Another element of the ‘hostile environment’, fines on landlords for housing lodgers and renting to occupiers without the ‘right to rent’ (the right to be in the UK) also soared in February 2024. For a first offence, the fine for housing an undocumented lodger rose from £80 to £5,000, and for renting to an occupier, from £1,000 to £10,000. For a subsequent offence, the fines rose to £10,000 and £20,000 respectively (from £500 and £3,000). In the first quarter of 2024, the Home Office collected £165,680 from 62 penalties.
Deportation
The logic of ‘hostile environment’ policies was to force those without papers to leave the UK or ‘self-deport’, saving the costs of enforced removal. Enforced returns from the UK decreased from over 15,000 in 2012 to 4,873 in the year to June 2023 and 7,190 in the year to June 2024, of which fewer than one-third were of people refused asylum and most of the rest were foreign national offenders. The largest group of returned asylum seekers were Albanians, while Romanians topped the list of non-asylum returns. There were 22,361 voluntary returns in the year to June 2024, down from 31,700 in 2012 but up from 15,382 in the previous year; top nationalities were Indian, Albanian and Brazilian. In August 2024, home secretary Yvette Cooper, signalling a return to enforced removals, declared the government’s intention to deport 14,500 undocumented migrants in the next six months.
FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE:
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Support organisations
We list a few of the hundreds of migrant and refugee support groups, most of which are members of the Together with Refugees coalition (below).
Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI)
For immigration detainees
Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID)
For refugees and asylum seekers
Together with refugees (coalition)
Against labour exploitation
Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX)
IWGB (trade union)
Kalayaan (domestic workers)
United Voices of the World (trade union)
Waling Waling (domestic workers)
Against trafficking, modern slavery
[1] Home Office statistics do not talk in terms of arrivals but of visas granted, which is a rough proxy for numbers arriving.
[i] This number refers to applications not applicants, a main applicant can make a claim that includes dependants.
[ii] The figures are a snapshot of the people in receipt of support at the end of a quarter, not the total throughout the period. The annual figures shown here are the combined totals at the end of each quarter.
[iii] Release on bail allows the person to leave detention but may involve restrictions such as regular reporting to an immigration official, electronic monitoring/tagging, restrictions on working, studying and where to live.